Problem Areas for Photorealism
Leonides02
Posts: 1,379
Many of the new figures are approaching photorealism. However, there seem to be specific problem areas on the figures that have barely advanced. I was wondering if anyone has had any tips / tricks for improvement?
Hair - The is the worst and, unfortunately, also the most difficult to improve. Some of our illustrious PA's have excellant hair textures, but they still aren't photorealistic.
Teeth - Another big problem area. Teeth almost always look like chiclets. They're too bright, too unform in color and shape, and really don't seem organic in any way.
Gums - The gums always look like plastic.
Tongue - The tongue might be the least photorealistic part of any figure. I understand it's rarely seen up close, but still
Sclera - While pupils have improved a lot, I feel like sclera still looks really bad.
Nails - When they're not painted, nails often don't look photoreal.
Any others you can think of? And any products, solutions, or tricks you've found?
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Comments
I think for me the problem area is proportions. Too often the realistic figure is not so, just due to its sheer improbablity.
The 4 things that ruin photorealism the most are:
1) Poor shaders - this includes not only the shaders for the people themselves, but also hair and fabric.
2) Poor hair - again poor shaders, bad transparency maps, poor geometry, bad rigging all contribute to fake looking hair
3) Poor eye geometry - even when the above 2 things aren't a problem, this usually is a giveaway that you're looking at a rendered image
4) Poor expressions - mainly due to insufficient geometry, rigging, and / or limited morph capabilities, natural expressions are rare, most images I see that approach photorealism involve very muted expressions, anything more than that and the illusion is broken. Images with convincing non neutral expressions seem to always involve custom morphs to create the expression
My problem with the nails is the lack of cuticles, at least for unpainted nails.
Yes, hair in Daz is so bad.
i think symmetry of faces is a big one too. speaking of which, is there an easy way to morph in asymmetry? Vendors sure love symmetry. Do you have to use like Shape Splitter/X-morphs to split morphs or what?
I see many users making realistic figures with bespoke texture sets and bespoke hair and bespoke eyes etc, but very few vendors. I mean, isnt the value proposition of Daz that i can just press the make art button and have a realistic character? The fact that im expected to put in lots of effort to even set up the characters and environs is a bit annoying lol.
A couple morph sets / figures come with assymetry morphs. They help a lot!
PowerPose is an underutilized tool in helping to achieve more realistic images. With G8 and PowerPose, more realistic expressions and asymmetry are extremely easy to achieve.
Also, a light and subtle touch with the Mesh Grabber tool can provide asymmetry to faces, bodies, hair, etc.
Any for the guys? I've seen ones for G8F, but haven't come across any for G8M; they could be out there and I've just missed them because it's so much easier to find that kind of diversity in products for the female figures.
There was a G8F pack I considered picking up on Rendo to see how well they transferred, but given the more difficult return policy I'd rather pick some up here in case it doesn't work out.
...I agree that hair is often the biggest fail point.
Joint bends as well. For example, sometimes I still see the "bent tube" effect on arms since muscle groups don't flex properly
Many of Sangriart and bluejaunte characters come with asymmetry morphs, sadly none for G8M.
Oh, you are so right. This really bothers me a lot.
Part of the problem is, that in order to have natural expressions, you'll need to have custom expressions for every single character.
All above and FEET.
At least in close-ups. Instead of fine wrinkles it's a noisy, ugly bump map mess on the soles and no details on the tip of the toes. Sometimes artist with custom color skins don't even watch to get the same color where the texture seam is. So you can see there is a huge quality fall-off from a pretty detailed face to very unrealistic ugly feet.
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/275696/feet-hd-detail-or-lack-thereof/p1
Is photorealism in DAZ Studio a realistic goal? Even with Hollywoods millions they struggle to get photorealistic CGI. Clearly still images are a lot easier than animation, but I think you have to consider that Studio is a free application, there are expensive professional alternatives if you really want to trick the viewer into believing a render is a photograph. Some people get closer than others, after a lot of work. I think the best renders I have seen made with DAZ Studio might not achieve photorealism, but they do at least avoid the 'uncanny valley', I think that is a achievable goal.
Yes. We're nearly there now.
Already many people outside of our hobby think renders are photographs. Remember, we have trained ourselves to look for the details which signify an image is a render.
I had a chat with my friend in a pub about half a year ago, we hadn't been able to meet for some time, and I picked up 3D Art as a hobby in the meantime. I wanted to tell him about Daz Studio and I started by showing him fullscreen promos for Alexandra 8, and he congratulated me for being "acquainted" to such a beautiful lady. Older than us, sure, but still looking good. *wink*wink* You lucky... I almost drowned with my beer with laughter.
I recently made a portrait of HD Alexandra 8, and used it as the background on the monitors of the PC in my office. Some of my female colleagues asked me who was it, they said it was a nice photo and asked whether I had taken the photo myself.
I fooled guys by showing them my custom character, by telling them, that I'd had a drink with that girl. None of them spotted the fake.
BTW, I might get interessted in Cartoon Rendering, right after "project photorealism" is fully accomplished.
Yeah... My long term (long, long, long term) goal is to be able to make completely digital, realistic looking (short) movies at home before meeting my maker.
In principle the only thing still missing is a believable text to speech program (free), which is kind of strange as sound was amongst the first things you were able to get in and out of a computer.
This free set has two G8M asymmetry morphs for the head and one for the body: https://sharecg.com/v/91888/gallery/21/DAZ-Studio/SY-200-Morphs-for-Genesis-8-Head-and-Body
Or if you don't want to have a computer speech generated voice, go on Fiverr and hire a voiceover actor, or put up a casting notice on something like Backstage or LA Casting.
...I've received those sort of comments an a few of my pieces. On one I did of a British rail station, the person (from the UK) commented that they felt like they needed to get their sweater.
Hair: The average human head has about 100,000 hairs with a similar number of hair follicles.
Okay, let that sink in for a second, then consider (for example) fibermesh hair. To get those 100,000 hairs is still straining for most computers. Getting it at the exact right thickness as well is going to be another problem, especially with longer hair, as it does get thinner at the ends. Even with non-fibermesh hair, it's going to take a lot of effort to actually get 100,000 hairs to display (no matter how dense or well textured those polygons are), and at the same time not display, and then there's also some translucency and reflection going on that is simply hard to get right. There's a reason why so many artists do some post processing in Photoshop, and subtle touch-ups on hair are a pretty common part of that.
Next problem is the shaders.. Many shaders are actually pretty good these days, but the results they give can easily fall apart with the wrong light. Some shaders simply need a bit more light to come out right. Other shaders are very sensitive to the warmth of the light, or the tint, or any combination of light settings. Consistently using skins from the same designer usually helps finding the right settings, but those may be completely out of whack for skins from other designers. Combine skins from different designers, and you'll quickly run into problems where one figure looks too pale or too flat or whatever compared to the other. There are some tricks and tools to bring them closer to eachother in how they render, but the combination of characters may still look a bit "off". Especially if you're the one doing the rendering, it will be noticable, as you're probably more critical of your work than others are.
Then, there's the environment. Using a photograph of an actual location as a background, or a carefully created environment as a background, makes a noticable difference. No matter how realistic your figure is, it can end up looking "off" when placed against a background photograph. Whether it's different light, or a different light angle, or whatever, it is very hard to get this right to such a degree that it won't ever trigger some subconcious recognition that "things ain't right". Some people are better at recognizing whether something's wrong than others, and for many people, the subconcious warning will almost never trigger. However, if you're the one creating the image, you are already aware of its components and how the image was set up. So you already know it's fake, and you actually even know what some of the tell-tale signs are. So if you want to know whether your image is realistic: don't ask yourself, but ask someone who doesn't even know you can do things like that.
Oh awesome, thank you so much! I've been pretty well away from my computer since last night so I'm catching up on the forum now, I swear I've already downloaded those and just never got around to installing them. I'll get that sorted out tonight, and maybe still give that G8F set a shot at transferring. Even if they just kinda work it may help. :)
and we're sure theyre not just humoring people?
i'd like to see this response plotted against age and visual acuity as i dont see how anyone exposed to hollywood level cgi on a regular basis would not immediately reject 99% of daz renders as fake within milliseconds of looking at them.
Personally I have the hardest time with clothing. Even if it is draped well (and thats hard enough) it still frequently looks like plastic. anything with a little bit of fuzziness which includes all knits are almost a complete no go. I have a bit of a rant in the Daz Studio forum about bump mapping and after falling down a google rabbit hole I have found some evidence that other render engines have somewhat fixed the dreaded shadow terminator issue by comparison cycles has this implemented https://www.yiningkarlli.com/projects/shadowterminator.html and its signifigantly easier to get fabric looking... fabricy. I actually just asked the Iray devs on their blog
I've actually done physically accurate hair density and follicle size With DS' strand based hair tools. This hair is the low end of but still hits real world correct values of density and follicle thickness 140 strands per cm and .09mm thick.
with tessalation set to 2 rather than 3, the total memory consumption for all of the geometry in the entire scene is only 212.812 MiB thats for the hair, eyebrows, vellus, and figure itself. it also actually renders quite fast as transmaps tend to slow rendering down and this forgoes them.
if I bump the tessalation up to 3 (the hair shader tends to be more stable - at 2 it will only look good in certain lighting) the geometry memory consumption is 582.727 MiB which is pretty heavy, but it is also worth noting that the hair is only using 2 1k maps less memory going to textures than most hais scalps by themselves
and for completeness sake the hair rendered by itself uses
with tessalation set to 3 550.262 MiB for geometry, but only 11.443 MiB for textures which is basically nothing
with tessalation set to 2 183.434 MiB for geometry and again only 11.443 MiB for textures
by compariso OOt's ryan hair which is a pretty great and realistic transmapped hair uses 40.942 MiB for the geometry, but a whopping 1011.395 MiB for textures by default
I tested some other hairs and most at least hit 183.434 MiB for textures (though the aprilysh hairs I tested were an exception those were very resource friendly)
both renders took 6 minutes on my laptop which has a 1060 - not exactly a super computer
tldr according to my calculations you can get hair of the same thickness and density as the real world without using more resources than many of the transmapped hairs you already use
a lot of this can be relative sharpness renders tend to be much shaper than photos paricularly if you're not using and depth of field
I generally avoid mixing photos with 3d for this reason but if I do I tend to do something to try to blend them as much as possible. It usully involves postwork
This is great information, j cade, and your renders never don't impress!
I'd love to know more about the shadow terminator issue. I didn't realize you'd find the culprit of the normal problems you mentioned in the Photorealism thread. Is there somewhere I can read about this?
We always see, at first glance, what we expect to see. That's just how brains work.
Yeah, totallly agree. I've posted a few pictures on my facebook and Instagram and people who I never talk to, who rarely, if ever, have comment on any my posts whether they were renders or whatever, folks who have zero incentive to try and humor me have commented asking if that was a real photo or not. And these people are all in their early to mid 30's, maybe they've hit 40. So it can definitely be done.
I've even used Daz characters as background actors in the film I did last year and watching the movie, unless I ask if they notice anything peculiar about the shot, they don't even register that the people aren't real. We just had a screening at a theater two weeks ago and I was worried blown up that huge it would be noticable beyond belief, but unless you were looking for it, you'd never know. But the key really is lighting. I only light with emissive spheres or planes, that seems to hit the skin just right to give a realistic feel.
a lot of these statements just read like copes for people who want their average/bad renders to be photoreal.
J cade's renders are some of the few i've seen that look passably real at a glance, and perhaps even on quite close inspection, so that's promising. But not sure we should be letting some rando on facebook squinting at their 720p phonescreen at 4am to be the arbiter of what's photoreal or not.
And a lot of people are using a lack of photorealism as an excuse for why their renders aren't worth looking at.